Publisher Policies

In light of concerns about the reproducibility of published research and funder policies, more publishers are establishing policies that the data underlying the results published must be made available to the readers. This is achieved in different ways. Some publishers host the data on their own servers; these data may or may not be available without a subscription and there is no guarantee for how long they will be retained. Others require that authors deposit the underlying data in an appropriate subject or institutional data repository (think GenBank, ICSPR, DataDryad, etc.). Like funder policies, publisher policies exempt data that are private (e.g., PHI), classified, or which have other protections under the law.

Publicly funded research data are a public good, produced in the public interest, which should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible in a timely and responsible manner that does not harm intellectual property. RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy (2012).

How to meet the requirement

Generally, there are three commonly used options for making available the data supporting your published results:

You submit your data to a trusted repository for your field of research and share the unique identifier or web address with the publisher (recommended)

You submit your data to the IUPUI institutional data repository (IUPUI DataWorks) and share the unique identifier or web address with the publisher (recommended)

You submit your data to the publisher, who then makes it available on their site (not recommended as a primary option; if this is required by the publisher, also deposit your data in IUPUI DataWorks to ensure long-term availability)

What data has to be shared?

All data and related metadata underlying the findings reported in a submitted manuscript should be deposited in an appropriate public repository, unless already provided as part of the submitted article.

Supporting data must be made available to editors and peer-reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. The preferred way to share large data sets is via public repositories.